


The Time Between

by Aethria



Category: Oathbreaker (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Back to Hurt, But At Least We're Not Alone, Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Gore, We May Be Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24923998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethria/pseuds/Aethria
Summary: Thyia woke up.She wasn’t supposed to.
Relationships: Thyia (Oathbreaker) & Calywen (Oathbreaker)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19





	The Time Between

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kikiolana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kikiolana/gifts).



> For Kiki. This went a different route than I had planned, I hope it's still angsty enough for you!  
> A million thanks to Mephi for all the feedback and encouragement along the way <3

Thyia woke up.

She wasn’t supposed to.

Panic gripped her chest.

_It hadn’t worked_.

She had been so sure it would. So sure she trapped her lover behind a ward to stop them from intervening. So sure she had said her final goodbyes.

_But she woke up._

She lay still for a moment, trying to get her bearings.

She couldn’t feel any pain. Didn’t feel too cold, didn’t feel tired. Didn’t even feel hungry like she usually did after a healing.

Somewhere in the room, a man was sobbing.

She reluctantly opened her eyes.

Above her was the domed ceiling of the Summit building.

Confused, Thyia sat up and looked around. The room was largely empty, aside from the crying man. She never would have expected him.

“ _Calywen_?” she demanded.

The man whirled around. 

“You!” He hissed, all but flying across the room at her. “This is all your fault!”

Thyia hardly had time to react. She tried to sling a ward, a spell, anything his way. She felt a chill run down her spine when nothing happened. She didn’t get to think about it before he was crashing on top of her. His hands clawed at her face and eyes as he kept yelling.

“If it weren’t for you I could have done it! I could have controlled him! But he was so eager to fight you, and you just served yourself to him on a platter!”

Thyia twisted underneath him. She managed to get her hands around his wrists and rolled, shoving him back into the tile and doing her best to pin him down with her weight.

She froze when she saw his face.

Blood stained his face in thick trails from his eyes. The color was so sharp and grim.

Thar’akith must have destroyed him from the inside out.

But that meant-

Calywen bucked beneath her suddenly.

“Get off me! Let me go!” He wailed.

Thyia released one of his hands and delivered a sharp slap to his bloodied cheek.

“We’re dead you idiot! Don’t you see that?”

He spat in her face. “Yes, I know we’re dead! And it’s your fault!”

“How is it my fault,” Thyia snapped, fending off his clawed hand again. “You were the one who decided to free him!”

They wrestled for control for a while. When Calywen seemed to realize he wasn’t going to unseat her, he gave a final frustrated scream and slumped back into the stone floor. After he lay there for a few minutes, Thyia cautiously rolled off of him. She laid on the floor too.

“So,” she said, “This is what death looks like when you anger Xiris.”

They laid in silence for a while.

Thyia hadn’t noticed how dark the room was until light began to creep up the walls. She sat up and took a look around. The light of the sunrise revealed how grisly the room was. Blood, both human red and demon black, pooled on the floor. Sprays of it clung to the walls. And, in the center of the ritual circle, lay Calywen’s body.

Thyia found herself staring at it with a morbid fascination. Calywen noticed.

“You can still see yours if you look over the cliff,” he murmured. “I think they’re going to bury you today.”

Footsteps echoed down the corridor toward them. Thyia’s heart ached when Virion appeared in the archway. He had clearly been crying.

“Virion,” Calywen whispered. He scrambled to his feet and tried to catch his arm.

Virion passed straight through him, unhindered. He knelt by Calywen’s body for a moment.

“I can’t believe it, Calywen. Making me bury you, when the General-” He cut himself off. “This is more than you deserve.” With that, he scooped up the King’s body and exited the room.

Calywen tried to follow him but was caught at the archway. He began to cry again as he pounded on the invisible ward.

Thyia left him to it. She went to peer over the cliff’s edge.

The rocks were covered in so much blood.

There was a roaring in her ears as she followed the trail to the base of the cliff. 

Her body was there.

The cloak spread over it had shifted in the wind overnight. She could see her own face, horribly pale, but with a serene expression.

The top of her head was. Well.

Feeling numb, Thyia ran a shaking hand through her hair. When she found a crack in her skull, she decided it was time to stop investigating and sit down.

More people emerged from their tents as the sun continued to rise. Calywen came to sit by her side at some point. Together, they watched Virion take his body far from the camp and bury him in a shallow grave.

Lea covered Thyia’s body more securely, then went with Argandea to dig a much deeper grave.

Alwenn, looking pale and exhausted, seemed to be guiding the other mages in making sprays of flowers come to life around them.

Half a dozen Walinad soldiers stood ready, waiting for orders from their King. Said King had not left his tent yet.

After a few hours, everyone seemed ready. The blank earth had been practically converted into a garden. Raelan finally emerged from his tent. As he took his place before the gathering survivors, his soldiers gently picked up Thyia’s body. With all of her friends and allies watching, she was lowered into the grave.

From this height, she couldn’t hear the speech Raelan gave. She knew it would be a good one.

When he was done speaking, he grabbed a handful of dirt and tossed it in her grave.

Next came Lea and Argandea. Alwenn. Virion.

Her friends gravitated together into a group embrace. Behind them, soldiers shovelled dirt into her grave. The crowd dispersed. Finally, when they put their shovels down, her friends broke apart. She watched her lover carefully place something on top of the marker.

Somehow, the sun was setting already. Her friends faded into the night. Even with the clusters of people around the campfires, all was quiet.

Calywen spoke up. “I always thought my funeral would be like that. A hero’s. And instead I got an unmarked pile of dirt.”

“I thought the opposite,” Thyia admitted. “I thought I would die Surgeless and alone, at the hands of an enemy. I was sure I’d get tossed in a sewer and no one would notice.”

Silence fell over them again. The campfires below faded out.

“Do you think anyone will remember me?” Calywen asked.

“I don’t know.”

They spent the rest of the night watching the stars.

After a few days of silence, Thyia felt like she would go crazy if she didn’t talk. She almost felt jittery. The Mendamar army was breaking camp below when she decided to ask Calywen the question that had been bothering her for weeks.

“When did Thar’akith speak to you?”

“He was in my head for so long, I don’t remember when it started.” Calywen said. “But he first took a physical shape a few months ago.”

“Did you try to resist then?”

He flashed her a bitter smile. “Of course not. He offered everything I ever wanted.”

Thyia’s temper rose in an instant. “Of course not. Kings are always the same.”

He whipped around to face her, looking as though she’d slapped him. She felt a flicker of excitement run through her. A good fight always made her feel better.

But, much to her surprise, Calywen bit down on whatever he’d been about to say. Instead, the picture of snobby royalty, he rose and went to sit on the other side of the dome. His back was perfectly straight.

He stayed there, facing the wall, even as night fell.

In the morning, the Mendarmar army was nothing more than a dot on the horizon.

When the Asmadi’s began packing two days later and he still hadn’t moved, Thyia caved.

“When I fought him the first time, I wanted to die.” 

There was a pause. Her words hung heavy in the air.

He turned as he rose. She caught a glimpse of a small smile on his face as he crossed the room to sit beside her again.

“Tell me what it was like. To fight him then.”

“To tell you about that, first I have to tell you about how I met the Vail.”

The sun rose and fell. The Asmadi army vanished into the north. And all the while, she talked.

“He was my only love,” Calywen murmured as Virion placed a tiny marker over his grave. “My parents hated him.” He gave her a quick, watery smile.

It’s hard for her to think about, knowing what he did to his “only love”. She made herself ask for more anyway. She owed him a little catharsis.

“I wanted to do so much more with them,” Thyia said. She watched her lover linger at her graveside while the rest of the camp packed. She glanced at Calywen, expecting him to shrug it off. Instead, he meets her gaze with a serious expression.

“Tell me about it. What you wanted this future to be like.”

Slowly, the remaining soldiers left the plains. Her friends left with them.

Calywen picked up on her mood. They were quiet that day.

“Do you think we could have been friends if we met in life,” Calywen finally asked, long after night fell.

“No.” Thyia said. “But I think we can be friends now.”

Time was strange on the mountain.

They couldn’t sleep. They couldn’t leave the room. The ground held their feet firmly, but they passed through everything else.

With nothing else to do, they sat together and watched the world outside.

When the days were long, they watched a team turn her grave into a proper tomb. There was a courtyard now, surrounded by stone pillars. A garden began to branch out around it.

When the leaves began to change, Calywen’s body was moved into a corner of the garden. The only marker was a small plaque in the wall above his head. They could just see it when they hung over the edge of the cliff.

They didn’t talk about it.

That happened more and more frequently. When snow fell and the nights were long, they spent seemingly endless hours sitting at the cliff edge. Each lost in thought, but their sides pressed together. It was hard to keep track of the days, but occasionally Thyia found herself wondering if she could still talk. On those days, she would take a deep breath and nudge Calywen with her elbow.

“Hi,” she would murmur.

“Hi,” he would always answer.

When the snow melted and flowers emerged in the garden, Thyia turned to face Calywen and found him already turning to face her. She tipped her head towards the colorful blooms below, and offered him a smile. He nodded in the same direction, and smiled too.

The return of the sun brought back some life back to them both. They took to strolling around the edge of the down to pass the days.

After a winter side by side, it felt right to walk arm in arm.

The days grew longer again. It felt right to talk more. From childhood memories to favorite foods, misplaced crushes to the worst bards, no topic felt too small. Their steady companionship easily translated into deep friendship.

Despite the odds, they had found a sense of peace.

Then the storm came.

After nearly a year of being immune to the weather, Thyia was shocked when the howling wind slammed into her. It sent her sliding across the floor. A distant part of her noticed that the stones were still stained with blood.

“Calywen!” She yelped, flailing her arms.

He ran to her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “What in the Divine's names is this?”

Lightning flashed angrily by.

Startled, they exchanged a wild look.

The wind picked up, yanking at Thyia harder. They clung desperately to each other. Despite their efforts, the wind still passed through Calywen, ripping Thyia out of his grasp.

To her horror, she realized she was being pushed back to the edge of the cliff.

“Thyia!” Calywen yelled, scrambling after her. He slammed into some sort of invisible ward.

“Calywen!” She screamed, hands searching for something to hang on to.

_Hello Oathbreaker._

The voice of Xiris in her head stunned her. The brief slip of attention was enough for the wind to tug her free from the cliff.

“THYIA!”

Thyia closed her eyes, and fell again.

_...Am I not the Divine of Life?_

Thyia woke up again.

She wasn’t supposed to.

But there she was.

In the rain. Naked. Cold.

Alone.

And pregnant.

She started to scream.

At the top of the mountain, invisible to her, Calywen screamed back.


End file.
